“Not Really Asking.” Representative Sims and the Threat to Reason

Over the
last several days, videos of Pennsylvania State
Representative Brian Sims accosting protestors quietly praying outside of a
Philadelphia-area Planned Parenthood clinic have received wide notice and
commentary. In one video, Sims appears to offer a financial
reward to anyone who could reveal the identities—doxxing is the internet
term—of three underage girls protesting outside the clinic. Cue the national outrage.

I’m also
angry. Rep. Sims’s actions towards these young women are irresponsible,
threatening, and unbecoming a representative of a free people. However, another
moment in the video troubles me almost as much, since it reveals a profound
misunderstanding of the purpose of moral duty.

Roughly
halfway through the video, Sims approaches another protestor, a young man who
respectfully doffs his hat and calmly provides his name. Sims asks him, “What
makes you think that it’s your job to tell women what’s right for their
bodies?” The young man begins to offer a response, but Sims dismissively cuts
him off, responding, “The truth is I’m not really asking because I don’t care.
Shame on you.”

Think
about the implications of that statement: I’m
not really asking. Like many controversial issues, the abortion debate is
caught up in a web of profound and important commitments. Morality, freedom,
the meaning of humanity, rights, death, suffering, God—all these issues, and
more, are involved. When Sims indicates that he’s not really asking, he doesn’t
really care, and then says “shame on you,” Sims, like so many others, betrays
not only his angry shallowness, but his failure to understand the nature of the
moral life.

Americans
are taught to value their rights, and correctly so, but making a rights claim
is no small matter. While some people seem to think that they have a vague
right to anything they really wish were so, most people, it seems to me,
understand that when I say I have a right to x I’m making a claim not only on myself but on others as well. If I
have a right to x, or a right to not
have x done to me, I’m saying that
others—you, the state—have an obligation to provide x or not do x to me. If I
have a right to my property, say, then you are obligated to not steal, use, or
ruin my property. If I have a right to be free from an established religion,
then you are obligated to not force me to worship at the established church,
and so on. To claim a right is to make a claim not only for yourself but also
on others, and that should be done cautiously.

When it
comes to religious freedom, we as a people have understood that every person
has this freedom because they have a grave duty to follow their conscience, to
seek truth, to live in keeping with truth, and to obey God, or what they
honestly understand to be God and God’s commandments, so long as they do not
harm or interfere with other’s equal right to do so.

Like many
others, I believe that a direct and intentional abortion is an unwarranted and
immoral killing of a human being. I understand that others disagree with me,
and, of course, it is logically possible that I am wrong. But, if you are
pro-abortion, take a moment to imagine my point of view, namely, I believe a
human being is being killed without justification, and I believe that I am
obligated and duty-bound as a moral agent to not cooperate with this killing.
As I understand it, a grave moral crime is being committed.

So when Brian
Sims, or others like him, “aren’t really asking” and “don’t care” but offer
only “shame,” to a peacefully (and legally) protesting young man, Sims is
suggesting that the duties and obligations another believes himself bound by
can simply be ignored, repressed, and shamed. (And I know, and admit, that some
pro-life people also act unreasonably towards others.)

But if we
follow the logic of Sims to its conclusion, it means the end of a democratic
republic, which exists to secure a form of life where its members can live
their lives freely, in keeping with their own duties and responsibilities. A
decent society, a decent person, encourages its members to fulfill their moral
responsibility, and, so long as they do not interfere with the rights of
others, that society supports and secures the freedom to follow conscience.

Not so
Rep. Sims. He and his ilk do not recognize that others have a duty to follow
their conscience, and thus Rep. Sims betrays decency, democracy, and the sacred
rights of a free citizenry.